The formula: people plus animals

Trying to understand the causes of people’s antagonism, we initiated extensive household surveys and village discussions. We found that the sanctuary authorities have failed to perform the most basic function as required by the law when a wildlife sanctuary is declared. This is the process of ‘settlement of rights’ of people who are already living in an area of forest just after a sanctuary is initially notified. It turned out that the process had been initiated by the district administration as early as 1983 but never completed.

Though rights were never settled, the 11 villages in the core zone were denied any form of development, such as building of pucca roads, wells or schools under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972). Small-scale agriculture was also abruptly banned without provision of alternative livelihood sources, forcing people to take up goat-rearing, one of the activities most damaging to forest. Today the sanctuary authorities spend most of their energies driving out livestock and people from various parts of the sanctuary.

Here people have never had any stake in wildlife conservation; rather, their livelihoods are ironically dependent on the decline of wildlife. For example, they have never been involved in cooperative tourism ventures such as running tourist jeeps, guiding or running eateries so that their incomes from livestock-grazing, an important cause for habitat degradation, could be supplanted. Tourism revenues go either to park management, outside individuals or to the Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation. While on the other side, monetary compensation has never been paid to any villager whose buffalo was killed by a tiger, in all these years. Neither have any alternatives to livestock fodder or fuel wood been developed despite large sums being allotted to ‘eco-development’ in the park budget. No serious dialogue was ever established with local communities on ways to conserve nature or develop alternative livelihoods or even on village relocation.

Plans for village relocation from Sariska, were initiated several years ago but also seem to be dying a natural death due to governmental apathy. The helplessness of the sanctuary authorities in this regard is amply revealed by their inability to relocate even a tiny hamlet of only 20 families, all of whom are eager to move to a place where they can have a healthier lifestyle and possibly more secure livelihood. In four villages, plans for relocation have been finalised without serious consultations with village people or local NGOs.

While the authorities have been coming down heavily on local villager, they seem singularly unwilling to control the rapidly escalating numbers of tourists who over-run Sariska and cause imense disturbance to wild animals and birds. The approach road to the most visited site, Pandupol Mandir, goes through the best wildlife habitats and carries several thousand tourists each week. The mandir itself is located near a perennial spring, found to be critical for wildlife and biodiversity maintenance. Pollution from bathing people, washing of clothes and cooking utensils and burning of garbage is responsible for pollution of this spring which is likely to have a devastating effect on dependent fauna.

Is the Wildlife Act to be applied only to helpless victims such as local communities and not to prosperous tourists having political patronage?

Wildlife conservation in India has been riding on the backs of people who have been denied justice for years together and who belong to highly marginalised sections of Indian society. That is principally why conservation is very likely to be unsustainable in most wildlife sanctuaries of the country.

The writer is research associate, Wildlife Conservation Society-India Programme